In Progress: The New School University Center / SOM

Quickly rising on the corner of 14th Street and 5th Avenue in Manhattan, this new, multipurpose facility will soon become the “heart” of The New School – an avant-garde university in New York City. The University Center, designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), combines all aspects of a traditional campus into a single, 16-story building, offering 200,000 square feet of academic space on the first seven floors and 150,000 square feet for a 600-bed dormitory on the levels above.

The brass-and-glass structure, which is the largest construction project in the university’s 91-year history in Greenwich Village, is scheduled for completion in 2014.

In progress images and more information after the break.

Interactive spaces dispersed throughout the building are vertically intertwined by three iconic fire stairs. These spaces, which are designed to foster moments of spontaneous encounters and unstructured conversations, are visually traced along the brass facade as “hives of activity”.

Between these interactive zones are long, loft-style spaces which house 50,000 square feet of flexible spaces for design studios, classrooms, and computing labs. They are designed to be easily renovated or reconfigured with no impact on power, data, or lighting.

The building also features an 800-seat auditorium, a central library with distributed resource spaces throughout, a large cafeteria, a 2,200 square foot faculty resource room in addition to 15 faculty offices, three student lounges, and a lobby/café space on two levels that provides space for music performances.

The extensive academic program includes 19 fashion studios, 17 drawing studios, 12 classrooms, and 7 science labs. Virtually all schools and departments of the university are represented in this building. Program adjacencies are intentionally planned to promote collaboration in research rooms and chance encounters within generous circulation and social spaces.

The University Center is designed to LEED Gold standards and envisioned from the start to be a model for energy efficiency, carbon reduction, and sustainability. Through a rigorous process of evaluating viable, cost-effective, and maintainable energy savings techniques, the project is anticipated to achieve a 31.16% reduction in energy use from ASHRAE 90.1 (2007) requirements. The integrated design approach – which included senior level engineering and facilities personnel from The New School, The Durst Organization, and the A/E team – utilizes both passive techniques and active technologies to increase energy efficiency and reduce the carbon footprint.

To learn more about large educational projects rising in New York, check out the preliminary renderings of Cornell Tech – a new world-class technology and entrepreneurship campus, masterplanned by SOM, that is planned for Roosevelt Island.